Newspaper readership and MBTI^® preferences

Stereotypes have grown up around the readership of newspapers, to the extent of becoming, in effect, shorthand for recognised "types" of people. But to what extent does the "personality" of readers of different newspapers relate to these stereotypes? Specifically, what is the relationship of psychological type to newspaper readership?

Stereotype: "The Times is read by the people who run the country."

Readers of The Times are more likely to be Intuitive and Thinking types than are non-readers.

7 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Times.

Stereotype: "The Guardian is read by the people who know things would be better for everyone if they were running the country."

Guardian readers, as a group, do not show any clear or significant differences from the general population, in terms of either continuous scores or frequency of occurrence of individual types.

70 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Guardian

Stereotype: "The Daily Telegraph is read by the people who remember how they used to run the country (and the empire)."

Readers of The Daily Telegraph are more likely to be Perceiving and Extraverted types than are non-readers.

76 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Daily Telegraph.

Stereotype: "The Financial Times is read by the people who own the country."

Readers of the Financial Times are more likely to be Thinking types than are non-readers.

28 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading the Financial Times.

Stereotype: "The Independent is read by the people who do not know who runs the country but they are sure they are doing it wrong."

Readers of The Independent are more likely to be Intuitive  types than are non-readers.

61 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Independent.

Stereotype: "The Daily Mail is read by the spouses of the people who are running the country."

There are no significant differences in continuous score between readers and non-readers of the The Daily Mail.

22 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading the The Daily Mail.

Stereotype: "The Daily Express is read by the people who think the country should be run the way it used to be."

Readers of the The Daily Express are more likely to be Sensing types than are non-readers.

150 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Daily Express.

 Stereotype: "The Daily Mirror is read by the people who know that they, the working class, really run the country."

Readers of The Daily Mirror are more likely to be Sensing types than are non-readers.

243 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Daily Mirror.

Stereotype: "The Star is read by the people who think the Sun is a bit too upmarket."

Readers of The Daily Star are more likely to be Sensing types than are non-readers.

 235 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Daily Star.

Stereotype: "The Sun is read by the people who don't care who runs the country, as long as they do it topless."

Readers of The Sun are more likely to be Sensing types and Perceiving types than are non-readers.

 348 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Sun.

  Stereotype: "The Sport is read by the people who think that Elvis is running the country from his secret lunar bunker assisted by a team of topless aliens."

Readers of the The Sport are more likely to be Intuitive and Perceiving types than are non-readers.

80 people in the sample of 1634 reported reading The Sport.

 And the serious bits ...............

 Background to the study: sample

In 1997 OPP developed the new  version of the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator^® (MBTI^®). As part of this process, a research version of the indicator, was administered to a large representative sample of the UK population (n=1,634) by the Office of National Statistics. In addition to completing the MBTI®, participants were asked a number of biographical questions, including which newspaper they read.

The chart below shows how many respondents claimed to read each of the newspapers:

The composition of this sample was as follows:

Extraversion-Introversion

Of all the four MBTI^® dimensions, Extraversion-Introversion showed the least variation by newspaper.

Readers of the Telegraph were significantly more Extravert than those who did not read the paper, but there were no other statistically significant differences.

 

Sensing-Intuition

Readers of a number of newspapers are more likely to be Sensing types than are non-readers: Daily Express, Daily Mirror, The Sun, Daily Star.

Readers of other newspapers are more likely to be Intuitive types than are non-readers: The Times, The Independent, The Sport.

Thinking-Feeling
Readers of two newspapers are more likely to be Thinking types than are non-readers: The Times, Financial Times

Judging-Perceiving

Readers of the Daily Star are more likely to be Judging types than non-readers Readers of three newspapers are more likely to be Perceiving Types: The Telegraph, The Sun, The Sport

Conclusions

Ø      Newspapers varied widely in readership, from the Sun (348) to the Mail (22).

Ø      The S-N dimension showed the most variation between publications; 7 of the 14 newspapers showed a significant difference on this dimension, with a tendency for readers of broadsheet papers to have an Intuitive preference, and for tabloid readers to have a Sensing preference. The exception here was the Sport, whose readers tended to show an Intuitive preference. Sensing types may not enjoy the clear lack of factual content and surreal nature of the stories in this publication.

Ø      Readers of the Times and the Financial Times, were significantly more likely to have a preference for Thinking.

Ø      Readers of the Daily Star showed a preference for Judging; readers of three papers (Telegraph, Sun, Sport) showed a preference for Perceiving

Ø      Daily Telegraph readers tended to show a clear preference for Extraversion.

Ø      In terms of whole type, readers of many newspapers showed very clear preference

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